Will Ethereum need iExec to Scale?

Ethereums current state struggles when performing rigorous computations efficiently and at reasonable cost.

Today, this isn’t really an issue because most dApps (Decentralized Applications) don’t have a working product. The dApps only utilize Ethereum for their ICO sale and for simple transactions with their tokens — Ethereum is well suited for that. But once all these dApps start releasing actual products, with actual computational demands, Ethereum not only will not be able to keep up, but it will become prohibitively expensive. Since Ethereum charges ether (gas) to run the network, intensive computations would cost a fortune. Imagine when Ethereum’s computational demands increase by 10x, or 100x: the network will be unusable.

TLDR: Ethereum is great for simple computational processes like transactions. But the dApps on Ethereum need to do more. They need more power than the Ethereum virtual machine can provide.

The Solution

The solution to this is offchain computing. dApps need to be able to do their heavy computing offchain (meaning not on the Ethereum blockchain) and then bring the information and results back onto the Ethereum blockchain for verification. iExec enables just this. dApps can use iExec’s decentralized cloud computing services to safely, simply, and cheaply, execute their computation far from the inefficient and incapable Ethereum VM.

According to iExecs whitepaper they can make this system possible on a global scale. Including support for Fault Tolerance, multi-applications, multi-users, public/private infrastructure, deployment of virtual images data, data management, security and accountability, etc.

Example of dApps:

Flixxo - is a dApp that envisions itself as the decentralized YouTube. Because of all the encoding and decoding of videos on the blockchain, it requires an enormous amount of computer power. “iExec will allow the platform to do [this] by providing cloud resources,”

Request - is another partner. Request plans to offer automated auditing of financial records. This is also an extremely intensive computational process. iExec again provides the offchain solution for this computation — the results of the audit can then be easily transferred to the Ethereum blockchain.

Users and businesses will also be able to utilize the iExec services for their own projects and uses. Need more power for your fantasy football algorithms? iExec can do that. Want to play Fifa with 4k settings? iExec is your tool.

For those out there. Cloud computing in general is a must have market. Google, IBM, Microsoft all provide cloud computing so companies that need access to processing power without having to maintain expensive technological infrastructures themselves. Companies like Netflix, Apple and Etzy all manage in cloud computing with these companies